Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Spinetooth Oasis

Freud would have a field day.

​An adventure by Evlyn M, levels are a capitalist tool of oppression.
Written for “old school”
  There’s a really grim story lurking behind many creatives’ DIY passion projects, but I don’t think it’s all that subtle on this one. Spinetooth Oasis has presented itself as an adventure location, using forty two pages to cover less than two dozen keyed areas illustrated with crude but very psychosexually disturbed sketches. This work of…let’s call it art…involved multiple contributor-perpetrators but the primary organizer is claiming the majority of culpability here so we can hope that this isn’t a crime ring, but the association is definitely unsavory.
  The ostensible situation certainly has potential. Oasis in the midst of a canyon has valuable herbology, halfling tribe lives around the oasis wants to be left alone, owl/cactus cult does unsavory things with owls and cactus, ambulatory cactus creatures wander around in service of a minor elemental cactus godling, two rival bandit groups camp out in a tense standoff on either side of the oasis. Abstracted caravan bumbles in innocently into the middle of all this looking for desert drugs and refreshing water. There’s a little dungeon in one side that also is there because it’s there. Nothing wrong in the baseline, it's in the details and the extremely genitals-obsessed crude drawings that things start to fall apart.
  This was released in 2017. Whatever dark path was being walked down, I’m sure it’s complete now.
  Grudgingly, I’ll admit what I liked was the setup, it’s way way too abstract in places to be playable but at a high level that’s certainly a scenario for one or two sessions’ entertainment. The map, while simple and DOES NOT NEED TO BE ISOMETRIC, is made with a modicum of skill and not too unpleasant at a distance.
  So what can be improved here beyond “don’t collaborate with someone who hits the f way too hard in the word “flesh””? Well, while you have a lot of personality notes amidst the NPCs there’s not a lot on their deeper motivations, a strange omission. There “dungeon” piece is a bunch of caves without exploratory potential, better mapping (TOP DOWN PLEASE) as ever gives more choices for players. Vaguely creative-ish scenes need better connective tissues in general, relationship maps help if you’re trying to turn this into a social adventure. Being less puerile and suspicious in general would of course be ideal, but I’m not sure if that’s something this authorial team is capable of.
  The best use case for this adventure is as a prosecutorial exhibit in a criminal trial. It can also be used as a warning, a terrible totem of revulsion and terror to discourage someone from letting that id run wild. It’s also fine for kindling in its POD version.
  Final Rating? */***** while technically an “adventure”, not really practical for running without a ton of effort.

---